Communications

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:

All correspondence between the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center, including FOIA requests.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

The FBI has received your Freedom of Information Act/Privacy (FOIPA) request and it will be forwarded to Initial Processing for review. Your request will be processed under the provisions of FOIPA and a response will be mailed to you at a later date.

Requests for fee waivers and expedited processing will be addressed once your request has been assigned an FOIPA request number. You will receive written notification of the FBI's decision.

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Dec. 23, 2016. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed. You had assigned it reference number #1363750-000.

Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.

The request was received on 12-28-2016 (actual date request was scanned into the FOIPA Document Processing System) and assigned FOIPA Request Number #1363750-000. The request was closed on 01-03-2017. Correspondence indicating your request did not contain enough descriptive information to enable a reasonable search was mailed to your attention on 01-03-2017.

Please verify a current mailing address in order for us to resend the material.

The FBI has received your additional correspondence requesting a new copy of correspondence related to your Freedom of Information Act/Privacy (FOIPA) request and it has been forwarded to the assigned analyst for review.

You have directed your request to appeal the FBI's determination on your request to the improper entity. You may file an appeal by writing to the Director, Office of Information Policy (OIP), United States Department of Justice, Suite 11050, 1425 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20530-0001, or you may submit an appeal through OIP's FOIAonline portal by creating an account on the following web site: https://foiaonline.regulations.gov/foia/action/public/home. Your appeal must be postmarked or electronically transmitted within ninety (90) days from the date of the letter in order to be considered timely. If you submit your appeal by mail, both the letter and the envelope should be clearly marked "Freedom of Information Act Appeal." Please cite the FOIPA Request Number assigned to your request so that it may be easily identified.

You may seek dispute resolution services by contacting the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at 877-684-6448, or by emailing ogis@nara.gov<mailto:ogis@nara.gov>. Alternatively, you may contact the FBI's FOIA Public Liaison by emailing foipaquestions@ic.fbi.gov<mailto:foipaquestions@ic.fbi.gov> for dispute resolution services from the FBI. If you submit your dispute resolution correspondence by email, the subject heading should clearly state "Dispute Resolution Services," and you should also cite the FOIPA Request Number assigned to your request. Your use of dispute resolution services does not toll the time limit to file a timely appeal with the Director, OIP, U.S. Department of Justice.

I am appealing the determination that my request was not specific enough. The request for correspondence between the Bureau and a specific organization is more than sufficient, per statute and case law. Further, the request for copies of FOIA requests filed by the organization is also more than specific enough.

I provided the name of the organization. I'm not clear why that's not enough for you to search. Can you please clarify why this is a problem, or why you need more information? This would help me better help you.

Your request for any correspondence between the Southern Poverty Law Center and the FBI is too broad to enable a reasonable search under the FOIA. As indicated in our January 3, 2017 correspondence, recommendations to bring the request within the scope of a reasonable search can include individual names, time frames, and/or location. I would recommend limiting your request by a specific time frame, or specify an individual within the FBI whom you believe would have been in contact with SPLC. Another option would be to narrow the correspondence sought between the FBI and SPLC to a specific event or topic.

"Another option would be to narrow the correspondence sought between the FBI and SPLC to a specific event or topic."

Would a topic specification be sufficient if I were able to provide the types of cases that the Bureau would have corresponded with the SPLC on?

As for "location", I _may_ be able to provide the locations that letters likely would have come from. Would that be helpful? I'm not sure if that's how you would parse location for correspondence like this.

"or specify an individual within the FBI whom you believe would have been in contact with SPLC"

What if I could specify a division or task force? I may be able to dig that information out if it would be helpful, but since it's not quite as specific as what you suggested I wanted to check before I went to the effort of digging up potentially useless information.

As a follow-up, one other possibility just occurred to me. Re: "Another option would be to narrow the correspondence sought between the FBI and SPLC to a specific event or topic", I could also provide the names of some organizations that the SPLC may have corresponded with the Bureau on. Would this be helpful?

Types of cases may work to narrow your request depending on how broad the types you have in mind are. If you can combine these types with a timeframe, there's a greater possibility of it falling within a reasonable scope. Locations of where correspondence came from would be helpful. A division may yet be too broad for a search of all correspondence between SPLC and the FBI, particularly if it's a large division, but if you can narrow it to a task force, that would be more likely to be accepted as within the bounds of a reasonable search.